Apple has to pay up for stealing others’ books

Desperate to make up for the fact that Apple is losing value, it seems that Tim Cook has started pirating books behind the bamboo curtain.

A court in China has ordered Apple to pay compensation to eight Chinese writers and two companies for violating their copyrights. Apple had been flogging unlicensed electronic versions of their books on its online store and the court ordered Jobs’ Mob to pay $165,000 in compensation.

It is the second time that Apple has been fined for copyright violation in China and it appears to be a repeat offender. In September, a Chinese court ordered Apple to pay compensation to a Chinese encyclopaedia publisher for alleged copyright violation. Apple denied it did that and claimed that the book was copyrighted when it got there. It has since appealed against that decision.

Carolyn Wu, a spokeswoman for Apple said the company takes "copyright infringement complaints very seriously" and we guess will deny them in the highest court in the land if it has too.

She told the BBC that Apple was always updating our service to better assist content owners in protecting their rights.